BALLOUNEH, Lebanon — Long before she became one of the most celebrated food writers in the Middle East, Anissa Helou never imagined a career in cooking or writing. She stumbled into both worlds almost by chance when she was in her late 30s.
Now 74, Helou has built a devoted following across the region and around the globe, publishing close to a dozen books since the 1990s on the cuisines of the Middle East and beyond. Just last month, she was honored with Britain’s prestigious Guild of Food Writers Lifetime Achievement Award.
Born to a Lebanese mother and a Syrian father, Helou grew up in a Christian household where she spent countless hours watching her mother, grandmother, and paternal aunt work in the kitchen. Those early experiences gave her a deep appreciation for the culinary traditions of both Lebanon and Syria — two countries celebrated throughout the region for their rich and flavorful food.
“I was always fascinated by the kitchen, by their movements (and) by how they put things together, by the chopping,” Helou said of those early mentors. “I love being in the kitchen with them and of course I loved eating.”
Her newest book, “Lebanon: Cooking the Foods of My Homeland,” had its official launch in late June in Beirut at a ceremony held at Lebanon’s Tourism Ministry. The event drew a crowd that included food critics and restaurant owners.
The book arrives at a difficult moment for Lebanon, which has endured two wars in the past three years involving Israel and the Hezbollah militant group. One section of the book focuses specifically on food traditions in some of the southern Lebanese villages that have suffered the most severe destruction.
During multiple visits to the south — the most recent in October 2023 — Helou found that residents had developed their own distinct takes on traditional dishes. One example is mujadara, a dish built primarily around lentils. While it is commonly prepared with rice elsewhere, southern Lebanese cooks are more likely to use bulgur wheat.
“I discovered more, like, variations and added dishes, rather than something that was a complete revelation,” Helou said.
She has gathered walnuts from a tree growing beside the massive barrier that divides southern Lebanon from northern Israel, and she has spoken with residents who have lost their homes and livelihoods in the Hezbollah-Israel conflict.
One person who left a lasting impression on her was Moussa Ibrahim, from the southern village of Dibbine — an area that has seen intense fighting between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters. The violence in 2024 cost Ibrahim his business, which produced mouneh: a traditional Lebanese method of preserving vegetables, fruits, grains, and dairy through techniques such as sun-drying, salting, pickling, and submerging in olive oil.
A world traveler with a wide-ranging palate, Helou said she also has a deep love for Korean and Japanese food in addition to Middle Eastern cuisine.
“Lebanese, Iranian and Moroccan are among the greatest cuisines,” Helou said earlier this month from her late mother’s apartment in the Mount Lebanon town of Ballouneh.
“Lebanese cuisine is kind of a little bit more sophisticated, a lot fresher, more vibrant” than some other Middle Eastern food, she added, while preparing a traditional Lebanese lamb confit known as awarma.
When asked which city in the region produces the finest food, Helou didn’t hesitate — and her answer took her outside Lebanon entirely. She pointed to Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.
Aleppo is known for its centuries-old covered market — which sustained heavy damage during Syria’s civil war that began in March 2011 — and for a complex, layered cuisine shaped by Persian, North African, and Armenian influences.
“I think that Aleppo is undoubtedly the gastronomic capital of the Middle East, regardless of me being Syrian,” she said.
Helou’s work has also been shaped by global events. When the Islamic State group seized large portions of Syria and Iraq and declared a caliphate in 2014 — sparking a wave of deadly attacks and a surge in anti-Islamic sentiment worldwide — she responded by writing a book featuring roughly 300 recipes from Muslim countries.
“I was thinking, one way of presenting Islam and Muslim people positively could be through their foods,” she said.
Helou left Lebanon at 21 and now holds citizenship in Lebanon, Syria, and the United Kingdom. She has spent much of her adult life in Britain and Italy, though she continues to visit Lebanon regularly, cooking alongside locals and learning how they prepare specific dishes.
For years as a young woman, she refused to cook at all — even telling a partner at the time not to count on her for meals.
“I didn’t want to be domesticated. I was like a feminist and so I didn’t cook for a very long time,” she said.
Her attitude shifted after watching a friend cook a meal and seeing the joy it brought her partner. That moment nudged her toward the kitchen.
Her path to food writing began in 1992, when a conversation with a group of Lebanese expatriates sparked the idea of creating a cookbook filled with her mother’s recipes — filling a gap she noticed in Lebanese culinary literature. As luck would have it, a publisher was already searching for someone to write exactly that kind of book.
“That’s how I started, by sheer coincidence,” Helou said.
